The Man Who Knew Too Much eBook

“I am the man who knows too much to know anything,
or, at any rate, to do anything,” said Horne
Fisher. “I don’t mean especially about
Ireland. I mean about England. I mean about
the whole way we are governed, and perhaps the only
way we can be governed. You asked me just now
what became of the survivors of that tragedy.
Well, Wilson recovered and we managed to persuade
him to retire. But we had to pension that damnable
murderer more magnificently than any hero who ever
fought for England. I managed to save Michael
from the worst, but we had to send that perfectly
innocent man to penal servitude for a crime we know
he never committed, and it was only afterward that
we could connive in a sneakish way at his escape.
And Sir Walter Carey is Prime Minister of this country,
which he would probably never have been if the truth
had been told of such a horrible scandal in his department.
It might have done for us altogether in Ireland; it
would certainly have done for him. And he is
my father’s old friend, and has always smothered
me with kindness. I am too tangled up with the
whole thing, you see, and I was certainly never born
to set it right. You look distressed, not to
say shocked, and I’m not at all offended at it.
Let us change the subject by all means, if you like.
What do you think of this Burgundy? It’s
rather a discovery of mine, like the restaurant itself.”

And he proceeded to talk learnedly and luxuriantly
on all the wines of the world; on which subject, also,
some moralists would consider that he knew too much.

III. THE SOUL OF THE SCHOOLBOY

A large map of London would be needed to display the
wild and zigzag course of one day’s journey
undertaken by an uncle and his nephew; or, to speak
more truly, of a nephew and his uncle. For the
nephew, a schoolboy on a holiday, was in theory the
god in the car, or in the cab, tram, tube, and so
on, while his uncle was at most a priest dancing before
him and offering sacrifices. To put it more soberly,
the schoolboy had something of the stolid air of a
young duke doing the grand tour, while his elderly
relative was reduced to the position of a courier,
who nevertheless had to pay for everything like a
patron. The schoolboy was officially known as
Summers Minor, and in a more social manner as Stinks,
the only public tribute to his career as an amateur
photographer and electrician. The uncle was the
Rev. Thomas Twyford, a lean and lively old gentleman
with a red, eager face and white hair. He was
in the ordinary way a country clergyman, but he was
one of those who achieve the paradox of being famous
in an obscure way, because they are famous in an obscure
world. In a small circle of ecclesiastical archaeologists,
who were the only people who could even understand
one another’s discoveries, he occupied a recognized
and respectable place. And a critic might have
found even in that day’s journey at least as
much of the uncle’s hobby as of the nephew’s
holiday.